Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/ika-hands.htmlAbout the conversation with Octavio Paz:On Jan. 19, 1983, Robert Gardner was in Octavio Paz's library on the Paseo de la Reforma to talk about film and anthropology. With them was Robert Fulton who had come with Gardner to work on a long neglected film about Paz himself, a film that never materialized but of which this occasion and several other such scenes remain.

At this moment, Gardner was finishing Ika Hands. He wanted it to be about shamanism or at least the kind of magical practices for which the Ika were known. Going to Mexico to visit Paz was in tune with his belief in Paz as a person closer to being a shaman himself than anyone else he knew.

The idea was to invite Paz into the Ika world and also into his own concerns about how to represent that world: what can images tell us? Gardner hoped to do this by showing Paz parts of an early version of the film he was editing. The ensuing twenty odd minutes is the result of that experiment.

This short film (27 min) is included in the IKA HANDS special edition DVD distributed by Documentary Educational Resources and was premiered at the 2008 DOCSDF in Mexico City.